Month: May 2013

COUNTING THEM IN AND OUT Elizabeth Blackwell was the world’s first trained and registered woman doctor. This would in itself be a remarkable achievement, but when you add in the fact that she lost the sight of one eye in the early stages of her training (treating a baby infected with an infectious form of ophthalmia), and that she had to move between the US, England and France to attain her goal, it puts her into an altogether different league. I’ve been reading her story in Margaret Foster’s enthralling account of eight early pioneers of feminism, Significant Sisters. One 0f the clever things about the book is the way Forster tells the individual…

I went last week to the National Theatre's imaginative production of Othello. It is set in modern times, kicking off with Roderigo and Iago holding a cigarette conversation outside a pub. The second half takes place in Iraq or Afghanistan, with everyone in contemporary military garb, boots, camouflage gear and so on, and the scenes taking place in messrooms, sterile military offices and even washrooms and toilets. It works very well, for the most part. That initial conversation takes us very swiftly into the plot. It is immediately clear that Iago's resentment stems not just from being passed over for promotion to Othello's lieutenant, but from the fact that the position has been given…

Here's a rather unusual story of someone hitting the glass ceiling, recounted to me recently by John himself. No further comment needed. But if anyone can point me to a good pictorial representation of the glass ceiling, I'd be really grateful. John was a miner in the Llynfi valley in South Wales. After ten years of working with machinery he became a fitter, “a spanner being lighter than a shovel”. Then he hit what he called a glass ceiling - an unusual application of the image, given firstly that he’s a man and secondly that he was working underground... Anyway, he applied for a job teaching first aid, at a…

Alison Wolf’s new book, The XX Factor, is jam-packed with juicy items, enough to keep book groups and academic seminars in discussion mode for many hours. The sub-title, ‘how working women are creating a new society’, is a little misleading. Wolf focuses above all on women with top-end education. They are an elite, though when they are all put together there are a lot of them. She estimates these to be 15-20% of the population in most developed countries, amounting to some 70 million worldwide. They are educated at universities with high reputations, and they have high career aspirations. At the heart of the book is the argument that these…

COUNTING THEM IN AND OUT Elizabeth Blackwell was the world’s first trained and registered woman doctor. This would in itself be a remarkable achievement, but when you add in the fact that she lost the sight of one eye in the early stages of her training (treating a baby infected with an infectious form of ophthalmia), and that she had to move between the US, England and France to attain her goal, it puts her into an altogether different league. I’ve been reading her story in Margaret Foster’s enthralling account of eight early pioneers of feminism, Significant Sisters. One 0f the clever things about the book is the way Forster tells the individual…

I went last week to the National Theatre's imaginative production of Othello. It is set in modern times, kicking off with Roderigo and Iago holding a cigarette conversation outside a pub. The second half takes place in Iraq or Afghanistan, with everyone in contemporary military garb, boots, camouflage gear and so on, and the scenes taking place in messrooms, sterile military offices and even washrooms and toilets. It works very well, for the most part. That initial conversation takes us very swiftly into the plot. It is immediately clear that Iago's resentment stems not just from being passed over for promotion to Othello's lieutenant, but from the fact that the position has been given…

Here's a rather unusual story of someone hitting the glass ceiling, recounted to me recently by John himself. No further comment needed. But if anyone can point me to a good pictorial representation of the glass ceiling, I'd be really grateful. John was a miner in the Llynfi valley in South Wales. After ten years of working with machinery he became a fitter, “a spanner being lighter than a shovel”. Then he hit what he called a glass ceiling - an unusual application of the image, given firstly that he’s a man and secondly that he was working underground... Anyway, he applied for a job teaching first aid, at a…

Alison Wolf’s new book, The XX Factor, is jam-packed with juicy items, enough to keep book groups and academic seminars in discussion mode for many hours. The sub-title, ‘how working women are creating a new society’, is a little misleading. Wolf focuses above all on women with top-end education. They are an elite, though when they are all put together there are a lot of them. She estimates these to be 15-20% of the population in most developed countries, amounting to some 70 million worldwide. They are educated at universities with high reputations, and they have high career aspirations. At the heart of the book is the argument that these…

COUNTING THEM IN AND OUT Elizabeth Blackwell was the world’s first trained and registered woman doctor. This would in itself be a remarkable achievement, but when you add in the fact that she lost the sight of one eye in the early stages of her training (treating a baby infected with an infectious form of ophthalmia), and that she had to move between the US, England and France to attain her goal, it puts her into an altogether different league. I’ve been reading her story in Margaret Foster’s enthralling account of eight early pioneers of feminism, Significant Sisters. One 0f the clever things about the book is the way Forster tells the individual…

I went last week to the National Theatre's imaginative production of Othello. It is set in modern times, kicking off with Roderigo and Iago holding a cigarette conversation outside a pub. The second half takes place in Iraq or Afghanistan, with everyone in contemporary military garb, boots, camouflage gear and so on, and the scenes taking place in messrooms, sterile military offices and even washrooms and toilets. It works very well, for the most part. That initial conversation takes us very swiftly into the plot. It is immediately clear that Iago's resentment stems not just from being passed over for promotion to Othello's lieutenant, but from the fact that the position has been given…

Here's a rather unusual story of someone hitting the glass ceiling, recounted to me recently by John himself. No further comment needed. But if anyone can point me to a good pictorial representation of the glass ceiling, I'd be really grateful. John was a miner in the Llynfi valley in South Wales. After ten years of working with machinery he became a fitter, “a spanner being lighter than a shovel”. Then he hit what he called a glass ceiling - an unusual application of the image, given firstly that he’s a man and secondly that he was working underground... Anyway, he applied for a job teaching first aid, at a…

Alison Wolf’s new book, The XX Factor, is jam-packed with juicy items, enough to keep book groups and academic seminars in discussion mode for many hours. The sub-title, ‘how working women are creating a new society’, is a little misleading. Wolf focuses above all on women with top-end education. They are an elite, though when they are all put together there are a lot of them. She estimates these to be 15-20% of the population in most developed countries, amounting to some 70 million worldwide. They are educated at universities with high reputations, and they have high career aspirations. At the heart of the book is the argument that these…

COUNTING THEM IN AND OUT Elizabeth Blackwell was the world’s first trained and registered woman doctor. This would in itself be a remarkable achievement, but when you add in the fact that she lost the sight of one eye in the early stages of her training (treating a baby infected with an infectious form of ophthalmia), and that she had to move between the US, England and France to attain her goal, it puts her into an altogether different league. I’ve been reading her story in Margaret Foster’s enthralling account of eight early pioneers of feminism, Significant Sisters. One 0f the clever things about the book is the way Forster tells the individual…

I went last week to the National Theatre's imaginative production of Othello. It is set in modern times, kicking off with Roderigo and Iago holding a cigarette conversation outside a pub. The second half takes place in Iraq or Afghanistan, with everyone in contemporary military garb, boots, camouflage gear and so on, and the scenes taking place in messrooms, sterile military offices and even washrooms and toilets. It works very well, for the most part. That initial conversation takes us very swiftly into the plot. It is immediately clear that Iago's resentment stems not just from being passed over for promotion to Othello's lieutenant, but from the fact that the position has been given…

Here's a rather unusual story of someone hitting the glass ceiling, recounted to me recently by John himself. No further comment needed. But if anyone can point me to a good pictorial representation of the glass ceiling, I'd be really grateful. John was a miner in the Llynfi valley in South Wales. After ten years of working with machinery he became a fitter, “a spanner being lighter than a shovel”. Then he hit what he called a glass ceiling - an unusual application of the image, given firstly that he’s a man and secondly that he was working underground... Anyway, he applied for a job teaching first aid, at a…

Alison Wolf’s new book, The XX Factor, is jam-packed with juicy items, enough to keep book groups and academic seminars in discussion mode for many hours. The sub-title, ‘how working women are creating a new society’, is a little misleading. Wolf focuses above all on women with top-end education. They are an elite, though when they are all put together there are a lot of them. She estimates these to be 15-20% of the population in most developed countries, amounting to some 70 million worldwide. They are educated at universities with high reputations, and they have high career aspirations. At the heart of the book is the argument that these…

COUNTING THEM IN AND OUT Elizabeth Blackwell was the world’s first trained and registered woman doctor. This would in itself be a remarkable achievement, but when you add in the fact that she lost the sight of one eye in the early stages of her training (treating a baby infected with an infectious form of ophthalmia), and that she had to move between the US, England and France to attain her goal, it puts her into an altogether different league. I’ve been reading her story in Margaret Foster’s enthralling account of eight early pioneers of feminism, Significant Sisters. One 0f the clever things about the book is the way Forster tells the individual…

I went last week to the National Theatre's imaginative production of Othello. It is set in modern times, kicking off with Roderigo and Iago holding a cigarette conversation outside a pub. The second half takes place in Iraq or Afghanistan, with everyone in contemporary military garb, boots, camouflage gear and so on, and the scenes taking place in messrooms, sterile military offices and even washrooms and toilets. It works very well, for the most part. That initial conversation takes us very swiftly into the plot. It is immediately clear that Iago's resentment stems not just from being passed over for promotion to Othello's lieutenant, but from the fact that the position has been given…

Here's a rather unusual story of someone hitting the glass ceiling, recounted to me recently by John himself. No further comment needed. But if anyone can point me to a good pictorial representation of the glass ceiling, I'd be really grateful. John was a miner in the Llynfi valley in South Wales. After ten years of working with machinery he became a fitter, “a spanner being lighter than a shovel”. Then he hit what he called a glass ceiling - an unusual application of the image, given firstly that he’s a man and secondly that he was working underground... Anyway, he applied for a job teaching first aid, at a…

Alison Wolf’s new book, The XX Factor, is jam-packed with juicy items, enough to keep book groups and academic seminars in discussion mode for many hours. The sub-title, ‘how working women are creating a new society’, is a little misleading. Wolf focuses above all on women with top-end education. They are an elite, though when they are all put together there are a lot of them. She estimates these to be 15-20% of the population in most developed countries, amounting to some 70 million worldwide. They are educated at universities with high reputations, and they have high career aspirations. At the heart of the book is the argument that these…